PHOTOS: Solar cars in the land of kangaroos

The World Solar Challenge, in which college teams design and build their own solar-powered cars for a grueling, 1,860-mile race in Australia, is coming in October. The competition is where you will find some amazing engineering and artistic work by students from around the world. You can also check out the teams’ websites to learn about the tech specs and the inspirations behind the car designs.

The race’s website currently lists 27 teams from North and South America, Europe and Asia, including the Middle Eastern countries of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Most of the cars use silicon solar cells. Each car can have a battery pack with 5 kilowatt-hours of storage. Tokai University won the last race in 2009 by achieving an average speed of 100.54 km/h. Second place finisher was Nuon from the Netherlands at 91.88 km/h. The University of Michigan won the third place with 90.49 km/h. (Click here to check out past race results).

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Here are some photos of the cars that will be zooming their way from Darwin to Adelaide in two months: